In 2021, 76 % of voluntary pregnancy interruptions were practiced in drug form. A figure in progress. But to what time? The practice varies according to the territories.
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At a time when the right to abortion is threatened in the world, as in the United States, where the Supreme Court has canceled the ROE vs Wade – which guaranteed the right to abortion at the federal level – takes place, Wednesday, September 28, International Day to Abortion Day. In France, the deputies will look at the end of November at the end of November on the majority of the law of the majority aimed at inscribing this right in the Constitution. But, despite recent advances, such as lengthening the legal period to fourteen weeks of pregnancy, since the law of March 2, 2022, inequalities of access to abortion remain, depending on the profile of women or their place as residence. Less known, another issue is debated: preserving the choice of the abortion method. An element which appears in the preamble to the recommendations of good practice of the High Authority of Health (HAS).
Updates in 2021 In order to adapt to the context of health crisis, the HAS recommendations recommend the practice of drug abortion in health facilities as in the city, up to nine weeks of amenorrhea. After this period, the HAS strongly recommends that practitioners have recourse to an instrumental abortion, up to sixteen weeks of amenorrhea, or fourteen weeks of pregnancy.
A drug abortion begins with taking a first medication that allows you to stop pregnancy: mifepristone. A second medication, misoprostol, takes thirty-six hours to forty-eight hours after taking the first. It promotes contractions and causes the egg expulsion. Instrumental abortion, a surgical technique which requires anesthesia and a brief hospitalization, is practiced so far only by doctors – an experiment must start to open this practice to midwives.
No overall data exists, on a national level, concerning the number of drug abortion after nine weeks of amenorrhea. According to the latest data from the Directorate of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (DREES), published Tuesday, September 27, 76 % of the total of abortion practiced in 2021 were drugs, that they were carried out as an establishment of health or not. This figure was only 31 % in 2001. And 76 % of the drug abortions made in the hospital are less than eight weeks of amenorrhea.
“Medicine slightly ashamed”
However, Isabelle Derrendinger, president of the National Council of the Order of Midwives, makes an alarming observation: “If we cross the various data of the Drees, in addition to the increase in the number of drugs, There is an increase in the number of abortion made between twelve and fourteen weeks of amenorrhea [1 of 20 in 2020]. There is therefore an increase in the number of drug abortion beyond nine weeks of amenorrhea, this which goes against the recommendations of the has. “
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